Tarzan was kiiiinda dark. The first villain was genuinely scary, and gets killed. Eventually, a fairly important character dies on screen. The second villain's death was... extremely suspect.
My DA account... I draw stuff sometimes!I have to give Notre Dame some dark points for featuring a villain who isn't just evil, but genuinely believes that he is doing everything in God's name. That's actually scary.
Kinda like the killer from Se7en.
On the subject, I should point out that this movie is a perfect example of why darker does not necessarily mean better. The original concept was a lot darker than the final one, but it was changed because the dark setting took away from the story. Not something that happens often, but it sure is noticeable when it does.
Yeah, it looked really interesting but the racism angle, while it could probably have given us plenty of heartbreaking moments, also probably would have kept me from rooting for the city as well.
For instance, I would have liked to see Nick's relationship with his dad and him getting arrested for "threatening" a pair of lemmings (I still don't see how picking up the stamp they were holding and looking at them counts as that), then him trying to get it through Judy's head that the system she supports is a terrible miscarriage of justice, and a few other things, but the movie manages to be just as entertaining and filled with love and emotion as the other movie would have been, if not more so.
The really interesting thing is how making it less dark actually made it more dark in a sense. It's like how in Pokemon, the first games' villains are just a bunch of criminals while later games all have crazy "destroy the world" kind of plots, but the former actually comes across as darker because the latter is so out of this world that it doesn't really register as bad. Original Zootopia had a more grim, disturbing take on racism, but the racism it shows now is, in a way, darker, because it's so much like the racism that we can actually experience in real life.
Didn't a lot of Disney films originally have darker elements to them than how they ended up? In Bambi, the aftermath of the fire would have shown the churned remains of the hunter, in The Fox and the Hound, Chief would have died instead of just getting injured, in The Lion King 2, Zira would have committed suicide, etc. Just a few I recall at the top of my head. Granted, those were just parts of the story and not the whole thing.
edited 16th Apr '16 2:48:53 AM by Lancelot07
I thought the dragon was pretty cool. It was the part where Maleficent appeared in the fireplace that scared me.
This may not count since it was a live-action movie (and Disney co-produced it with Paramount) but Dragonslayer really disappointed me; this was my first Fantasy movie, I was very excited to see it and I got a deconstruction instead. The scene where the princess gets eaten by the dragon hatchlings still haunts me to this day.
edited 16th Apr '16 10:32:33 AM by Sijo
Any child, particularly Scandinavian or Finnish ones that grew up with the show will tell you that the scariest animated character they saw was The Groke from The Moomins
. I still remember the nightmares she gave me, and all my friends. No Disney villain has ever come close of the same effect, at least not personally.
edited 16th Apr '16 1:56:49 PM by Lancelot07
Well, someone on Tumblr got a bit too creative.
You guys ever heard of The Boy In The Striped Pajamas?

Seconding Hunchback.